Analyst firm Forrester reckons the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) software market could be worth as much as $15 billion in five years time, but for now it estimates as few as 15% of organisations have started to implemented these types of cloud services.
PaaS is an externally hosted service that provides businesses with everything that is needed to assemble, run and operate applications, and comes with all the provisioning, management and security tools that are needed to deploy them.
The nascent market is being developed by companies like Cordys, Google with its AppEngine, and the likes of Microsoft with Azure and Salesforce.com with Force.com, alongside a host of little heard of start-ups, one of which, SpringSource was recently bought out by VmWare.
Should the market segment develop in the way Forrester and others expect it to, platform-as-a-service could prove highly disruptive to the traditional on-premise application and database infrastructure sectors.
For enterprises PaaS software can be used to blend free cloud-based applications from the likes of Google with other on-demand or on-premise business data and work-flows to provide all manner of cloud-provisioned applications.
Independent software vendors could see it as offering them a new route-to-market, selling businesses all or part of their applications as a software service which is paid for according to usage.
Gartner confirms that take up among ISVs will be strongest initially, with demand from the enterprise market only just starting the emerge.
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Platform-as-a-service could also provide a much needed boost to the demand for external expertise from service providers with the relevant PaaS know-how.
To that end systems integration and computing services provider CSC has just announced it is to set up a global centre for one flavour of PaaS near to its European HQ in Holland, taking over the 20-strong Benelux professional services group of Cordys.
The two companies had been taking for over a year, Cordys CEO Jan Baan told us, and the move indicates the seriousness CSC has about the potential of PaaS, and the position in the market that Cordys has established as the leading player.
He said his company had decided over a year ago to develop an operational model which would involve many more business partners in the sale and deployment of its PaaS software.
Lem Lasher, president of CSC’s global business solutions group explained the step provided his company with a good solid hub to build a global practice around the Cordys PaaS product line. He said CSC would also become a reseller of Cordys Business Operations Platform.
The cooperation between the two companies started in the US after they jointly developed business at a large financial institution there.
They insist that although the latest deal between them sees the transfer of resources, it should in no way be seen as a precursor to any equity stake by the professional service firm.
